Ch 6 Combat "Achievement: Feat of Endurance 30 Gamer Points"

We're not given a long time during the faster than light jump to get things prepped. We have just enough time to rearm and resupply our units when we're deposited out in the middle of uncharted space. Once again it looks like the Covenant have beaten us to it, damn their superior technology. Anderson and the rest of the kids have barely had a chance to stretch their legs and crack a joke before a full scale alert prompts them to an emergency scramble...

Considering the circumstances and the levels of exhaustion and fatigue, with everyone pushed to their limits every available unit and able man is called to their station. Well apart from the faceless Zeon pilots who were in the Zaku I and Zaku Flipper, I guess they decided to join the Tessaract crewmen after realizing how horrible and old their mobile suits were.

Ramuiko and her team of rookies are on sortee as well but she has a proposition to make. Having seen how we're nothing more than a noisy rabble of teenagers with attitude (Aye yai yai Zordon!) on the equivilent of the love ship she's willing to offer us her services as a combat instructor.

Optional Flag 1
Ramuiko, Gaiablade and Caile will launch along with Anderson and we're prompted on wether we want to take up Ramuiko up on her offer. There's absolutlety no reason not to play ball with her, selecting no will completly ignore this entire series of flags.

By agreeing to the offer you'll have an additional optional objective to clear in this stage. The Zakus and the Zudah can take all the punishment they want but you need to make sure none of them get shot down. If a single one of them gets shot down this optional objective is automatically failed, so you're going to have to pull off some babysitting.

Back to what's going on.
The Pillar of Autumn will also launch it's squadron of kickass Longswords who'll be of a bigger help here than the Zaku units. Idris will also volunteer herself as a pilot as well. It doesn't take too much convincing to get the local team Android mascot onto the team but Natalie wants her in the maintenence team's repairing vessel as this could be a long winded affair...but offense is the best form of defence, darn it!

Deployment
Friendly Forces
- Tessaract
--- Natalie
- Verein Zero
--- Anderson
- 10 x Units of your choice (Pretty much EVERYONE)
- Gellme
--- Idris Level 8

NPC Allies
- Zudah
--- Ramuiko Level 13
- Zaku II High Mobility Test Type
--- Caile Level 8
- Zaku II
--- Gaiablade Level 8

-Pillar of Autumn
--- Keyes Level 12
- 2 x Longsword Fighters
--- UNSC Pilot Level 10
- Longsword Fighter
--- UNSC Pilot Level 8

Enemy Forces
- CCS Battlecruiser
--- Gold Elite Level 13
- 2 x Seraph Fighters
--- Blue Elite Level 10
- 3 x Seraph Fighters
--- Grunts Level 8

Seems pretty overkill for taking on a small covenant recon force. Which means things can only get crazy, Devil May Cry crazy.

We're also prompted to equip Idris' Gellme before she deploys which'll give us some options in making her an efficient repair monkey.

We're loading up the Gellme with Titanium Alloy to enhance Idrises survivability and giving her Stana's old Quantum Driver, it's ability to ignore enemy units when moving combined with a Gas Core Booster gives her a enemy ignoring movement of 8. There's no need for a computer system to be installed unless you have a spare M.I.V.S lying around for a reflex boost but if you can try and fill consumable slot with a Repair Crate for herself. Mechanics Guide to Repairing doesn't seem to work with the Gellme's repair system so don't worry too much about the misc slot unless you have a spare Theif brooch or Overlord brooch around.

Win Objectives
Things are a little complicated by the fact that both the Tesseract and the Pillar of Autumn were rendered immobile by the jump. The Pillar has been drained of almost all it's energy and has no way of regenerating it, putting it's M.A.C gun offline. It still remains highly dangerous with it's Archer Missile Pods and it's point defence turrets.

With where the two capital ships are positioned and their general toughness to almost all fire you shouldn't be too concerned with looking after our capital ships. Just keep an eye out for Anderson and the Zeon pilots on this one.

Engaging
More covenant forces just like the ones deployed near the final stages of chapter 5. Engage as you did before, keeping in mind that in my humble opinion it would be easier to mop up the Blue Elites before clearing out the Battlecruiser and it's Grunt escorts.

You've got tons of terrain here to take advantage of all offering a 20% bonus to all defences and the ring like structure up in the North West provides less defence bonuses but also regenerates health and energy.

This chapter looks so god darn straight forward there HAS to be something wrong. So prepare yourself for a full scale cluster fuck for this one. This entire map is going to get surrounded pretty fast and things are going to get overcomplicated with three different sets of babysitting duties.

We need three volunteers to run decoy duty who'll be responsible for meeting an entire covenent battlefleet singlehanded, each. All three individuals need to be both capable of looking after themselves either through SP Commands and also capable of putting down alot of damaging firepower in a short space of time.

Those who aren't running decoy will form part of a kill team with Anderson's leadership at the core of this along with his relationship bonuses helping out so that pretty much means the majority of the female cast will be sticking with the kill team.

I'm sending Hotariko directly north of the currently deployed covenant forces in a heavily equipped Demetris. Her Guts SP Command combined with her high evasion/reflex calculation can mitigate a ton of flak and she can push huge damage with a Maser Blade.

Bruno I'm sending to the very north-west tip of the ring structure in a Zaku II equipped with a good old beam shooter and box machinegun. His concentrate capability combined with his solid damage output will work perfectly in that location and it's regenerative capabilities.

I'm sending Stana quite far south of the currently deployed covenant fleet, hugging a nearby cluster of three asteroid fields. Stana will prove to be quite an able trooper with concentrate and can readily fall back against her potential should she take too many hits. The damage output of the ERX-75 is insane as well.

This is all build up towards the next set of events, so allow them to sit there looking pretty whilst the rest of your units deal with the targets on hand.


Optional Event 1
Moving the newely deployed Idris next to Anderson will prompt a short conversation where Idris hits home with a sobering fact that should she be destroyed she can just be 'rebuilt'. Idris...

Event 1
Taking out all enemy targets or starting on turn three will set into motion a new development. Just a fraction north from where we're skirmishing the Pillar will pick up a new jump signal. More coven- wait, what the hell is that?
Reinforcements
Neutral Forces
- Nirvana
--- Magno Level 11

Enemy Forces
- CCS Battlecruiser
--- Gold Elite Level 13
- 3 x CCS Battlecruisers
--- Gold Elites Level 15
- Seraph Fighter
--- Blue Elite Level 10
- 3 x Seraph Fighters
--- Grunts Level 7
- 6 x Seraph Fighters
--- Blue Elites Level 13
- 9 x Seraph Fighters
--- Grunts Level 8

That's a smaktard load of enemy forces. The Nirvana doesn't seem harmful to us for the moment we're ignoring it our major priorities are with the confirmed hostile covenant forces that have popped up all over the place.

The lower level covenant forces will deployed right ontop of Stana whilst the others will have popped in ontop of our decoy units and another fleet close to our kill team.

Have the Gellme concentrating on repairing the Longsword Fighters and have Natlie working on trusting the the Zaku team whenever they're severly damaged. Now's a good time to start burning survival based SP Commands to keep everyone healthy and in the thick of the fight. The more damage you can do now the bigger our rewards later on.

Event 2
After another turn has passed the Nirvana will deploy additional reinforcements from it's hangar in response to the Covenant opening up on them. It looks like another set of fighters and we're still not to sure what side it's on. Fortunatly Natalie is able to patch a line through just in time before we all start shooting each other and we're finally able to communicate with one another.

The unknown ship and it's crew are suprised to see both men and women working along side each other as if this was normal what's even more odd is that their entire crew is female AND THEY'RE PIRATES! As a stroke of luck they're not the kind of pirates we're after.

They'll open up all their communication lines and are willing to work together in dealing with the real enemy here. With visuals available the all female crew of the Nirvana are quick to remark on Anderson's...girlish appearance (COME ON ALREADY WE NEED THE TRAP OUTFIT NOW). Keeruu's really stoaked about an all female crew but first impressions for him don't go so well.

If Emma's trying to get into Anderson's pants she'll be even more so this time around. Captain Obvious is happy to point out this fact as a part of some additional dialogu. Oh Keeruu-Sensei.

Reinforcements
Friendly NPC Forces
- Dita SP Dread
--- Dita Level 9
- Jura SP Dread
--- Jura Level 10
- Meia SP Dread
--- Meia Level 12

Battle Mastery
The arrival of the Dreads on the scene brings about our Battle Mastery requirements. Objectives remain the same but if we want a really awesome reward out of this we need to make sure that the Dread s get out of this whole mess alive as well.

We've now got three babysitting operations to pull off.

The Zaku and Zudah unit are probably still mixed in amongst our units or are in a position to start moving towards the Covenant units threatening the Nirvana and the Dreads. For the Task Force runthrough it's mostly just Caile trying to rambo her way through to Hotariko right next to the Nirvana. Zaku defence should remain top prioritory as they really REALLY can't look after themselves. Fortunatly for us the Nirvana might be able to protect Caile from a few covenant attacks with it's auto defence systems.

Destroying the first batch of Covenant early will result in the Zaku unit detouring around and heading for the covenant forces near halo usually, hence why Bruno's there, fighting the good fight.

I'm going to start pulling off some of the Kill team to assist Hotariko as Anderson's in the prime position to map attack his set of targets until the cows come home. A nearby Battlecruiser is also in perfect position to fire a plasma torpedo at Caile, so we're going to hit the Battlecruiser with Idris' jamming ability and hoping. Our Yohko also has Iron Wall (lol level 15) so we're throwing her next to Caile as one last final precaution.

The dreads may or may not be self sufficient it'll all be based on evasion luck. The only real problem out here is Dita, the lowest ranking one out of the dread trio here as she's a bit of a klutz. If you can keep her out of trouble then the battle mastery should be easy to pull off. If attacked during the first turn there's a good chance they'll defend and let the Nirvana's Auto Defence take all the damage so their babysitting priority should come second.

The UNSC Longsword fighters are real stars here, they exceptionally good at keeping out of trouble and have pretty much intercepted and raped the squadron of Seraphs Stana heavily damaged leaving her nothing but the battle cruiser to really deal with. If you can keep any of these Longsword units alive you'll get them after the mission. They DESERVE a spot on the team as they'll keep intercepting damaged Seraphs taking them out of the equation so we're going to try and get all three out alive though their babysitting demands are low-teir.

Event 3
Another turn brings about some changes aboard the Nirvana, it'll finally get itself a helmsman that 'knows what he's doing' and will now start moving towards our other two ships. The Nirvana will start making it's way towards a target square close to our units meaning it's Auto Defence systems will be useless to us as we continue skirmishing with the Covenant elsewhere.

If you manage to clear the map before the Nirvana reaches it's goal then you've yourself some down time before the next event happens. You've got one whole turn to burn after it reaches the target zone so take the time to repair what you can.

You'll want to split up your forces again into two groups. You'll want your hardest hitters to remain in formation near your small fleet of ships and have the rest making headway towards the east side of the map again. We're nowhere near done yet.

Event 4
Yet another wave of covenant arrive in the far south-west, it's another formation of Seraphs with a CCS Battlecruiser at the center of their formation. It'll open fire on our three ships, missing the Nirvana, but hitting both the Pillar and the Tessaract. With the Pillar damaged Covenant boarding teams launch an assault on the Pillar of Autumn.

The Zeon team being a bunch of REAL soldiers and not a group of kids want to board the Autumn and help repel the borders but Keyes has other ideas. Master Chief is on deck and out of cryostasis. Keyes orders the Pillar to be abandoned. The Pillar of Autumn is going face first towards the ring and the Chief is taking Cortana off ship.

We'll have to assist the Pillar's final approach towards the ring, keeping what Covenant ships we can off it and rescue the captain later. The all female crew of the Nirvana are impressed by Keyes balls of steel.

Enemy Forces
- CCS Battlecruiser
--- Gold Elite Level 13
- 2 x Seraph Fighter
--- Blue Elite Level 10
- 3 x Seraph Fighters
--- Grunts Level 7

All allied NPCs get a free turn here as the Pillar of Autumn starts limping towards the ring so be quick on your feet in engaging incase the NPCs look to be on their last legs. The Nirvana and Tessaract will remain high value targets for the Covenant so they might be able to buy you some time.

Event 5
Killing off one of the new enemy targets will result in MORE reinforcements popping in but thankfully it's really small compared to everything else. The Nirvana takes a near miss that grazes it's shielding but in response we get yet another unit deployed on our side.
Reinforcements
Friendly NPC Forces
- SP Vanguard
--- Hibiki Level 10

Enemy Forces
- CCS Battlecruiser
--- Gold Elite Level 13
- 2 x Seraph Fighter
--- Blue Elite Level 10
- Seraph Fighter
--- Grunts Level 7

By now you should be well versed in Covenant killing, and the Vanguard is a welcome addition to the fight. It's not well armed but it's another damage soaking NPC out on the field that we're not required to look after in any way shape or form so let Hibiki do his own thing and keep worrying about the rest.

Bruno and Jean both have something to say to Hibiki so you might want to move them over to him and have a little chat. This isn't a required event but just something interesting to have a look at.

Event 6
The Pillar will reach the ring in 4 moves. With a bit of luck you might clear out the covenant a little before then. Cortana and the Chief will pilot their escape pod over towards the Tesseract but whilst they do two Seraph fighters attempt to stop the Autumn on it's descent.

If any of the Zeon team were shot down they'll redeploy once again and make a move to assist the Pillar from the intercepting forces together with Anderson. They're going to go down with the ship all the way onto the surface of the ringworld, shooting aliens as they go.

Tenea's realtionship with Anderson should automatically be sufficient enough for her to add a few moemoekyun~ lines as long as you ran through Sub Mission 4.
CANON CANON CANON. I'M SHIPPING ALBINO MAIDO AND ANDERSON AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT. Emma and Tenea's reaction is pretty priceless here.

A combined attack from Ramuiko and Gaiablade drops one of the enemy fighters whilst Caile and Anderson cripple the other only for atmospheric entry to interupt them. The Zaku team and Anderson will be leaving us for the remainder of the battle as the go down with the Autumn.

With Anderson out of the picture Natalie suddenly enters extreme Drill Instructor mode...I think she might be more of a megalomaniac than Anderson but at the very least we've still got ourselves a capable leader.

There's another god damn wave of enemy targets closing in from the east just to make sure we aren't already drained from all the combat and this time it's three more clusters of Battlecruisers. FUUUUU-
Wait...wat!?
OH GOD YES

Our new support obliterates one of the Battlecruisers. It looks like this newest set of reinforcements we're getting harrassed by this thing all the way here and as such are heavily damaged. It's also being piloted by a real pretty boy as well...and dat communication sound...hngghhh.

And he has an even BETTER rape face than Hotariko. New favorite male character confirmed.

Reinforcements
Friendly NPC Forces
- Lost Guilty
--- Dan Level 25 HOLY CRAP
--- Rin

Enemy Forces
- 2 x CCS Battlecruiser DAMAGED
--- Gold Elites Level 15
- 3 x Seraph Fighter DAMAGED
--- Blue Elites Level 10
- 5 x Seraph Fighter DAMAGED
--- Grunts Level 7

This is pure mop up. The Lost Guilty is so disgustingly armed you can sit back and watch it kill everything on it's side. It's got a +50 Overlord brooch so there shouldn't be anything to worry about. You'll purely be competing for kills here. If you haven't had the chance to go and talk to Hibiki with Jean and Bruno.

Clearing out the last of these reinforcements finally results in a job well done! Pat yourself on the back if you got through this clusterfuck intact. A small conflict will flare up between Emma and Keeruu but if Emma's hot for Anderson then Bruno will manage to defuse it all by teasing her a little on her crush. D'awwww.

With Master Cheif saftley aboard and the entire god damn area clear of any more battlecruisers everyone reboards their respective carriers. Dan's coming with us in his machine of awesomeness and the crew of the Nirvana, who are just as lost as we are, decide to fleet up with us until they can get a better idea of what's going on. If the Longsword pilots are still around they'll also dock with the Tesseract as we make for the ring world to rescue our stranded allies and our only hyperspace drive.

Simulation 5 "RAPE RAPE RAPE"

Oh dear god this simulation level is pure rape. Clearing Chapter 5 gives us another pirate simulator to get our teeth into but the sheer weight of numbers and upgrades all round make Simulator 5 pretty dangerous...

Deployment
Friendly Forces
- 5 x Units of your choice

Enemy Forces
Randomly Deployed
- 8 x Leoships
--- Space Vikings Level 9
- 6 x Snakefish
--- Space Vikings Level 10
- 4 x Armardens
--- Pirate Captain Level 12

Engaging
It's those loveable Leoships from before except this time they're a little more vicious and backed up by their bigger brothers and a few capital ships. To make matters worse we're dumped dead center in the map and there's no terrain features to take advantage of which can potential shaft us right in the beginning.

All enemy units in the area are spawned with an extra 100 hitpoints, a higher damage potential and are much more evasive than we're used to making the Leoships and Snakefish much more deadly. It doesn't help that it's incredibly difficult to one shot them now with their boost in hitpoints.

I'd recommend making a fast escape to one corner of the map and remaining in a tight formation to draw from as many bonuses as possible, leadership, helper even relationships boosts will help out here if you plan on lasting the entire mission, failing that map attacks to clear out all the fodder will help.

Your main experience earners here will be the Armardens, characters can confidently work their way up to level 13 or even 14 by picking up Armarden kills or even Level 15 for those with Great Effort. Clearing out all the level 9 and 10 scrubs with Anderson and Stana whilst everyone blitzes the capital ships is a good, tried and tested methord to build up experience whilst sacrificing some cash reward or just simply ignoring them and blowing up Armardens and quitting after a few kills is a good methord as well.

Waves
As always there's three waves of enemies, each consisting of 3 more Leoships, 2 more Snakefish and another Armarden. Due to the more difficult nature of sweeping out the little units numbers will probably start to build up very very fast.

Rewards
- 32,900 cash

Ch 5 Combat 2 "The Not So Long Haul"

Although things in the second part of Chapter 5's combat scenario ultimately play out and result in the same basic events, depending on what you did for Chapter 2 can modify some of these events and possibly make things a little more difficult if you didn't prepare yourself for this second part.

With the area secured and any remaining pirates in a full blown retreat it looks like the Task Force have completed the contract with flying colors. Looks like the SDA was man made by this big floating metal hulk the pirates called their base. It's got nothing on the Tessaract, or engines, or any real charm since we blasted it's ECM thingy so maybe there might be something on board worth taking.

If you picked up the two flags associtacted with Mifska then Anderson will request that Tenea find out more about Mifska, thinking she might be more closely associated to the pirates or even one of their four generals.

Jean will also follow up with this request if your relationship is high enough with her own playful jealousy that gets the Albino Maid all worked up but ends up hurting herself a little. Oh Anderson, will you ever get the hint you blockhead?

With the readings all clear the Tessaract picks up a new signal approaching the former SDA site. A Principality of Zeon Musai arrives on the scene and it's pretty snappy in deploying it's mobile suits on arrival in the South East.

Two Zaku I Early Types (poor bastards), a Zaku Flipper (YES!), a Zaku II (Yay), a Zaku II High Mobility Test Type (HELL YES!) and a Zudah (I came) make up the Musai's full mobile suit complement (Must be a refitted one to carry that extra suit). Judging from the age of the mobile suits, especially with those Zaku Early Types flying about the unit deployed here might not be your standard up to scratch Zeon team but with everything we've been through so far they might be a challenge.

If you worked for Zeon
The pilot of the Zudah wastes no time and opens fire on Anderson only to be halted by one of the pilots under her command. The Zeon team recognises your forces as the C.A.G mobile force that assisted the legendary Red Comet in the attack on Side 7.

Any friend of Char is a friend of Zeon and the new arrivals are quick to open up a communication channel with the Task Force.

After an apology from the Zudah pilot the Zeon unit reveal that they too were dispatched to clear the SDA from the area by high command, just a shame they arrived a little too late to help us sweep the pirates away. Judging from the levels of the unit, other than the Zudah it seems the rest of the team are wet behind the ears greenhorns. Maybe Zeon didn't dwell too much on the SDA but at least the pilots have their hearts set in the right place, for the good of the local colonies!

If you gave Char the Gundam parts in any form instead of using them to upgrade to the Verein Geves or keep the Learning Computer and alloys then one of the pilots will mention Char went and built himself a new mobile suit thanks to us. That's right. Char's got a Gundam. Giving him the parts really screws the Federation.

Things are interupted by the arrival of a new force. A formation of one capital ship class enemy and eight fighters drop in on the little get together right smack dab in the middle of the map. The Zeon forces have no idea who they are and only Natalie can shed some light on the situation, they ain't local and they've got far superior technology compared to us.

The capital ship will open up on the Musai and destroy it in a single shot. We're terribly outclassed here but the combined efforts of an exhausted mercenary unit and fresh faced Zaku and Zudah pilots might be able to handle this new enemy.

Destroying one of the enemy units will result in the next set of events.

If you worked for the Federation
The Zekes aren't too happy to see us around here in the SDA. Any attempts to communicate to them are instally brushed aside. They want to play and they want to play rough with the forces that halted their attack on Side 7.

Before we can get the party started the unknown fleet jumps into the middle of the combat just as if we were friends with the Zekes and destroy the Musai in a single shot and open fire on the Tessaract as well.

We're caught up in a three way brawl with Zakus shooting fighters and us and the unknown fleet shooting at us and the Zekes. It's recommended you ignore the Zeon forces completly and work on destroying the unknowns to trigger the next event.


Engaging
If the Zakus hate you ignore them completly. They'll be going on the Neutral phase so it'll take a while to get to them. If you deployed the Tessaract ontop of their deployment zone then they'll be too busy shooting at Natalie should it come to their phase or the real enemy on map will engage the Tessaract instead of the rookie Zeon pilots.

We've got two primary threats in the area and one set of Fodder.

The Seraph fighters are medium sized units that are probably the first set of fighters introduced in CF that are actually pretty deadly for our forces. Fortunately those piloted by Grunts are much more manageable compared to those with a Blue Elite at the controls and can be considered fodder.

Seraphs combine both insane mobility with their equipped thrusters, most skimming the 100 mark as well as being covered in a nice thick 40 armor rating and move 5. That 300 hit points of theirs can last for a surpising while especially with a whole size rank higher than a majority of our units.

They're loaded with three types of weapons, a range 1-5 post movement pulse laser with great accuracy and a mild critical boost which'll be it's weakest attack. Thanks to it's Medium size the Seraph can still hit pretty hard with this attack.

It's Heavy Plasma Cannon is usually it's optimum choice for counter attacks with a stat line that almost matches that of the Pulse Laser in it's accuracy and critical ratio bonus but it hits much harder with a range of only 1-3.

It also comes loaded with a map attack as it's best weapon but fortune smiles on us today as it can only be used on ground based targets and we're all in space.

Ideally it's best to engage at 4 squares or to beam snipe the Seraphs at maximum range to avoid taking on a great deal of damage.

Priority should be given to whitling down the Blue Elites as they're pretty good at chewing up Zakus and Vereins alike whilst the Grunts aren't as maor a threat.

Also in the area is a CCC class Battlecruiser and this thing has a good set of equipment and stats to backup it's oneshot of a Musai. The Battlecruiser has a Gold Elite and it's control staff at the helm of the ship making it INSANELY accurate with pretty much all it's weapons, and despite having a low armor rating it's Large classification and massive hitpoint pool can keep it in the fight despite the gravest of hits.

The Battlecruiser's primary anti-suit armanaent conists of a smaller ranged post-movement 1-2 Pulse Laser as found on the Seraph but it gains an additional +40 to it's base damage and with the Large classifcation it's going to be shearing off armor plates quite rapidly.

It also mounts Plasma Turrets with a range of 1-5 capable of ignoring all barriers and shielding on any target it fires against. The Turrets have a small reduction in accuracy but thanks to the command crew under the Gold Elite this reduction is pretty much negligible. With a base attack power of Large 280 expect a ton of hurt.

Finally it's primary anti-ship armanent is rounded out by a Plasma Torpedo launcher. The launcher comes loaded with just 3 rounds and requires the Gold Elite to be at 115 morale to fire off but has a maximum range of up to 7 squares with a deadzone at point blank. Again just like the Plasma Turret despite having a massive accuracy reduction the Gold Elite and it's command crew are able to score impressive hits with this thing. With a base attack power of Large 400 this used to pretty much one shot some of the Zaku Pilots or come very close until the chapter 6 update rolled around.

If the Battlecruiser is at high enough morale you'll want to drain all three of it's torpedo rounds by sniping with Beam Shooters at maximum range just to protect the Zeon forces or maybe even dodge a round meant for you in the Covenant attack phase.

Protecting the Zeon Forces
There's a small bonus here weather the Zeon forces hate you or love you. If you can keep the Zaku Flipper and/or any of the Zaku I Early Types you recieve them as potential suits. They don't have the greatest statline in the world but they can provide aditional valuble options for later on thanks to their Medium size category and better terrain modifiers.

If the Zeon forces are on your side you have about a two to three turn limit if you can catch the Covenant attention before the Flipper or the Early Types start getting themselves in trouble.

If the Zeon forces hate you and have the Tessaract on their deployment zone then you can squeeze a few more turns out of them for as long as Natallie can hold out by Trusting herself.

The next event is easily triggered but sometimes an early trigger might not help the Zakus at all and instead will hamper their chances for survival. If you're finding it hard to keep these units alive allow your damage to spread throughout the entire enemy fleet for a turn so that the Covenant can pull further away from the Zeon forces.

Event 1
Destroying one of the Covenant units will result in either one or two things happening depending on wether the Zeon forces are allied or not.

Having shot down one of the fighters the Task Force will get a visual of a corpse floating through the wreckage of the destroyed Seraph. If there's any doubts before there aren't any now, these guys have come a very long way away to say 'hi'. The Zeon forces will also have a few things to say if they're fighting along side you.

Another ship jumps into the area but thankfully this one wants to talk. Enter stage left the United Nations Space Command's "Pillar Of Autumn". Maybe the UN sent out a ship to check on us considering we're probably late as hell reaching Earth but as the conversation continues between our loveable commander and their loveable commander it all becomes clear that they're here by mistake as well. Great.

If the Zeon forces were shooting at you before they'll have a turn of heart and realize their own old suits aren't up to scratch for dealing with this and will now join forces with you. They'll be AI controlled but will stop wasting ammunition trying to shoot you down.

Jean will have a few things to say as well if she's hungry for Anderson, like how AWESOME Gaiablade is for a name and things about her mercenary blog up on Global Cortex.

The Pillar will also launch some of the best allied help deployed in game so far in the form of three Longsword Interceptors that can go toe to toe with Seraphs and put some pretty impressive hurt on the Battlecruiser.

We're on the home stretch and the enemy forces are now caught up in a three way pincer.

Event 2
With the Battlecruiser and it's escorts eliminated it looks like we've finally got ourselves a well deserved break...which lasts about 5 seconds. We barely have enough time to brofist the Zeons on a job well done for getting through this massacre when Cortana will pip in with jump signatures all over the place cropping up.

Five more formations of Covenant battlecruisers and their escorts arrive in the area at full alert conditions. Everyone's exhausted at this point and low on ammunition and the possiblity of dragging the nearby colony in this conflict is growing ever imminent.

There's nothing that can be done other than to make a hasty retreat and lead the pursuing Covenant away from Earth. It takes a little convincing to get the Zeon forces to come along with us, though I would have thought having no Capital Ship would have made things impossibly hard trying to get back home.

With no jumpdrive to speak of the Tessaract will piggy back off the Autum, getting dragged along into the jump sphere techno babel thingy and despite the Zudah breaking down at the most crucial moment everyone's able to slip away in time.

Reward
We're not getting the reward from the contract but there's lots of optional rewards you can pick up. Venesia's recovered metals are freakin' awesome.

Battle Mastery Rewards
- Electrically Charged Armor (HP 350 Armor 15. Slash Resist. Beam, Explosion Weaknesses)
- 2 x Reactive Armor (HP 250 Armor 10. Slash Resist. Beam, Explosion Weaknesses)

Unit Survival Rewards
- New Unit Zaku Flipper
- New Unit Zaku I Early Type
- New Unit Zaku I Early Type

Ch 5 Combat 1"The Long Haul"

Mission. Chapter. Mission. Chapter. Oh lord we need some standardization all up in here. Minor nitpicking aside this is an endurance conflict that'll pit you against several waves on enemies and also has a pretty interesting branch based off what you've done for chapter 2...

Deployment
Friendly Forces
- Tessaract
--- Natalie
- Verein Zero
--- Anderson
- 2 x Verein First Types
--- John
--- Yohko
- 4 x Units of your choice
If relationship with Jean is very good then in addition.
- AG-01
--- Jean

Unit 1 will be placed to the left of the Tessaract.
Unit 2 will be placed to the left of the upper V-One.
Unit 4 will be placed below the Tessaract.

Bring Rane along for Fetter. Seriously.

Enemy Forces
- 12 x Leoships
--- Level 9 Space Vikings
- 8 x Snakefish
--- Level 10 Space Vikings
- 4 x Amardens
--- Level 12 Pirate Captains

We've caught the pirates with their pants down on this one. They deployed the majority of their forces hoping to get some easy takings by ambushing another poor defenceless leisure cruiser only for it to deploy a plethora of mecha right in front of them.

If Jean was touching Anderson on the launch she'll remark that our loveable commander has the craziest of plans but he's also the coolest employer she's had.

At the same time as long as you've paid some attention to her Jean's morale will instantly hit 120 if she's deployed in the combat zone as well which is awesome as everyone else will be at 80 due to not being able to talk to one another in the fight.

Win Condition
This one's another straight forward game of tag with a stationary target. We've got no time limit at all and the objective won't be triggered at all by clearing the stage of all enemies so take your time to destroy the deployed pirates to earn back some much needed morale.

Engaging
Oh those poor Leos. They're just the same as the ones from Chapter 3 just with slightly higher leveled Space Vikings who are still space inept so there won't be much trouble from them. Again just focus fire on the poor bastards to avoid getting Kamikazied.

The Snakefishes are more than just simple pallet swaped Leoships. They have marginal statistic improvements all round to all numerical stats short of a bigger energy pool but are still being piloted by slack jawed Vikings meaning they're still trying to fight you with a D rank in space.

Their weapons however have recieved an upgrade. Their 3-Way Gattling Beam is a mild improvement over the 4-Way Machine Cannon but if your units are plated in anything but ThermoKevlar then take note that this attack is considered a beam attack with a post-movement range of 1-4 and comes with a good accuracy boost.

They also come loaded with a deadly Fang Rush attack which has a post-movement range of 1-2 which is incredibly accurate and with a very solid critical chance. Fortunatley it doesn't count as a beam attack so it shouldn't strike any weaknesses.

The Snakefishes need to be your priority targets to make it through with little damage. After they're all gone you can engage the Leoships however you want. Even with the morale reduction they can be taken out in two shots or in a single shot from Jean.

The Armardens will often hold their positions on the map until you approach them after which any one of the capital ships that are nearby will start to pursue. This gives us the option of either sitting at the deployment area to mop up all the fighters at our own pace or heading out to punch a hole through them and the ships.

The Armardens should be taken with a little more seriousness. Their captains aren't as retarded as the Vikings and are capable of pulling off an S rank in space but their capital ships are slow and cumbersome compared to our "small" sized units.

Their primary attack is an anti-ship Laser Cannon with a post movement range of 2-6 which is horribly inaccurate. Any well trained unit leeching off of Anderson's leadership ability will be able to dodge this attack no problem but any hits taken can severly cripple a unit as again this attack counts as a beam.

Their secondary weapons are post-movement range 1-2 anti-suit Turret Machine Cannons. Even though they don't have a crazy accuracy penalty a good, highly mobile suit leeching off Leadership can still reguarly dodge this attack and even if it doesn't it won't hurt as much as getting a full on LASER TO THE FACE.

Take the Armardens on after gaining all the morale you can from the small fry.

The Tessaract is on hand to repair any damaged units that board it. It will also reload any ammunition on carried weapons in hardpoints but it doesn't want to reload Anderson's frame. It will also refuel units as well.

Aer Frame Shenanigans
If you missed the early Sidus frame send everyone north at Anderson's unfleeted movement.

End turn.

Next turn Fleeting and Attention Anderson and move him just under or a little to the right and under the square with no stars just a blank square. Move everyone else closeish but just far enough to not be a target. The AI LOVES to shoot at Natalie or Yohko so make sure these two are a little further.

End turn.

Don't counter attack except against any ship that moves to point blank range in which case give it a burst of the Leo Machinegun.

Next turn Attention Anderson find your favoritest Macross soundtrack or Dragonar opening 1 and hit Missile Spread.
Mop up the Snakefishes with ranged attacks from everyone else and watch smugly as the damaged Leoships and untouched Amardens continue to shoot at Anderson.

You can probably adjust a square to the right to hit the Armardens as well. Easy money and experience not halfed by being a map attack kill.

Optional Event 1
If the relationship between Anderson and Jean has been going well you've got the chance to earn the two some quick morale.

If Jean hasn't revealed she can still communicate through touch then moving her next to Anderson and using the talk option will earn the two a quick 5 morale burst.

If Jean did reveal she could communicate then instead of a 5 morale burst we get a 10 morale burst to the two and Anderson will tell her that after this whole buisness is over he'd still want to be friends with her after the employment contract is fufilled. Daw.

Event 1
Again I have to recommend sweeping the entire area of badguys before tagging the objective. Heck board everyone on the Tessaract and let it taxi everyone over to the pirate base.

Dump everyone on the base without tagging the objective and wait until your next turn. There's no terrain bonuses for doing this but it just makes things seem a little cooler and set's things up nicely for what's about to come.
Tagging the target square will set into motion the next set of events. The communication lines will be cleared of interference and the pirates on the base launch an emergency sortee with everthing they have left.

They're abandoning their fabricated base and trying to get their ill gotten gains out of here but we're getting our own form of reinforcements.

Event 1 Reinforcements
Friendly Forces
- ERX-75 Lechiffon
--- Stana

Stana will arrive just west of the base.

Enemy Forces
- Blood Duke
--- Level 12 Rakoj
- Amarden with 2000 additonal HP
--- Level 15 Pirate Captain
- 6 x Snakefish
--- Level 10 Space Vikings
- 5 x Leoships
--- Level 9 Space Vikings

The pirate reinforcements will be spread all over the base, or all around you if you put your group on it. Oddly the mission objectives won't change so you'll have to trust me on the following parts.

Your objectives now are to destroy everything. The Battle Mastery also makes itself known, we need to knock down Rakoj's hitpoints below 50% before taking out the fleeing Amarden.

Optional Event 2
An optional event that can be done as soon as the hp boosted Armarden makes an appearance. I think this used to be a flag event but in the recent Chapter 6 update it might have been removed, but I'm not too sure.

Eitherway attacking the Armarden with Anderson will spark up an interesting flow of dialogue with Mifska, a character who reminds me too much of Cinque from Nanoha, which is a good thing. Oh god dat eye patch.

Battle Mastery
The Battle Mastery for this stage also doubles up as a Flag event as well so it's pretty important that you get this one. It's usually best to clear up all the little ships in the area first before tackling Rakoj.

You'll want to have Ikarane Fetter the Armarden at every chance she can until you get Rakoj off the field as the Armarden will attempt to flee west out of the combat zone.

Rakoj as a pilot is really solid. He starts with Evasive Perception which boosts his evasion naturally. Also he has one helping of Counter to let him strike first with a single counter-attack and has two ranks of helper letting him take hits for any of his minions or to provide support fire, hence the reason to clear up all his little ones.

The Blood Duke is also disgustingly well equipped with a ton of beam based weaponry that can really put on the hurt if you're not equipped with Thermo Kevlar. He'll prioritize using his Pulse Cannon Gun. The Pulse Cannon gun runs on an ammunition reserve of 12 rounds but it's solidly accurate with a mild chance of critical hits. Support attacks are everything here to avoid loosing units.

Anderson, Emma, Ray, Stana and Yohko all have something to say to Rakoj when they open up on him. Ray's is the most interesting, perhaps hinting on a future development for the poor guy. Emma, Ray, Stana and Yohko will also have an additional cinematic attack thrown into the mix all of which mostly ineffectual apart from Yohko's which will cancel her original attack entirely.
Also don't use any sort of "On Next Attack" SP Command effect for Emma, Ray or Yohko for their first attack on Rakoj as it will waste SP, instead throw it into Concentrate or nothing at all.

Whilst you're pounding on Rakoj it might be a good idea to get a few hits in on the Armarden. Stana is in a great position to do this but try not to bring it below 50% health until you do so to Rakoj first.

Event 2
Getting Rakoj down to 50% hitpoints will force him off the field setting us up the good old battle mastery, net us one of the flags for the map and also set into motion the next event. Seeing that Rakoj has retreated Mifska will be a little annoyed at her fleeing rearguard.

The Armarden's shields will be raised as high as they can in the form of a 30 morale boost to the ship and it will continue trying to retreat to the west. Now you can really pile on the hurt.

Event 3
Dropping the Armarden below 50% hitpoints will force Mifska to order the ship's cargo holds be dumped to allow the ship to make a hasty retreat from the area. If Rakoj is still around he'll retreat from the area as well but if he's not then we're able to get back some of Venesia's stolen goods.

Failure to stop the Armarden will result in it getting the hell out of here and we get nothing.

Preparing For Part 2
With just the Armarden close to it's 50% hit point threshold on the map it's probably a very good time to prepare for the next part of this stage.

Dock anyone in need of repairs or a recharge onboard the Tessaract and deploy what units you can right in the center of the map. Leave a unit or two to hound the fleeing Armarden for when you're ready for the next part.

If you worked for the Federation in Chapter 2-B then if you want as a precaution send the Tessaract south-east after redeploying your units. If you're Zeon scum keep it sitting pretty amongst your units as the Tessaract will have no effect.

Simulation 4 "It came from Red Alert"

Getting ourselves through chapter 4 dumps us with probably the least profitable simulator mission ever, only really useful for fast experience gains but little us in reward. Delicious giant ants everywhere in Simulator 4...

Deployment

Friendly Forces
- 5 x Units of your choice

Unit 4 will be deployed right in the middle of unit 3 and 5.

Enemy Forces
Randomly Deployed
- 18 x Giant Bugs
--- Giant Bug Levels 8-10

Engaging
Now that we've got the chance to deploy what units we want to the real danger of the Giant Ants rears it's ugly head. Indeed with 5 offensive units available to us we can push out the damage even more so on the ants than usual the random deployment of the ants can put us into trouble very quickly.

Switch over any beam shooters armed on your units in favor of high ammunition assault M4s or Box Machineguns as this stage is more of an endurance testing level overall and for the upcoming levels we're going to need to push the capabilities of your available suits as hard as possible.

Something we couldn't touch on in stage 4 due to the limitation in deployment is the fact that the ants are specialized in fighting against Small class units. That's pretty much EVERYONE apart from your Zaku from either route.

The simulator is also a chance for getting a good idea on how the AI works and getting a good ranging technique down, getting just far away enough to dodge a stupid amount of attacks to get just a few.

There's no money to made from giant bugs but as long as you're shooting level 10 ones you can easily get up to level 11, maybe even push things to level 12.

Waves
Three waves of five extra giant bugs will pop up, the majority of which around level 10. Due to the difficulty of killing the ants in our small sized units these numbers can build up rapidly.

Rewards
- Nothing!

Ch 4 Combat "Earth Defence Force 2017"

Giant bugs? All those memories from EDF are flooding back to me and we don't have an AF-20RAR between us. Speaking of funky military designations it's our first run in with an Armored Core unit and it is just swimming in abreviations and numbers...

Deployment
Friendly Forces
-Verein Zero
---Anderson
- Noir
--- Unknown Raven (BESTEST MUSIC)

Enemy Forces
-3 x Giant Bugs with Anderson
-3 x Giant Bugs with Raven.

Nothing fancy about the deployment in this stage. It's just Anderson on his lonesome competing against the Unknown Raven.

Win Condition
Trying to beat the Raven in his AC Noir is made pretty difficult by a combination of him being level 15 compared to an Anderson who might be skirting level 10, maybe even level 11 if you grind like crazy. Things are further complicated with the AC Noir being probably one of the best units in game so far with a combination of damage reducing equipment, KARASAWA KARASAWA KARASAWA, and an incredibly high movement rate complete with overboost.

Then everything hits an 'impossible' wall due to phase order as well. Because the Raven is considered a neutral target it goes after getting a full round of counter attacks weakening his set of bugs. Even with you doing the best you can this often puts the Raven a whole phase ahead of you which he'll stretch even further with his ability to reach the second target square in a single turn where it'll take us two unless we start moving early and risk not killing our intial starting targets first.

There's a small chance of earning a phase back when we hit the second square in actions but by then the Raven will of had a turn or a turn and a phase ahead of us.

All in all, don't go busting a nut over trying to beat the Raven in this test. The odds are so horribly stacked against you there's little point in trying. Just focus on the battle mastery.

Engaging
The giant bugs aren't so much of a threat. They're more adorable versions of the Leoships in the previous level except they can really stack up damage quickly a little later on.

It takes about two hits of an average weapon from any of the two available Zero frames to neutralize a bug with a base 100 morale. By the time we're skimming 140-150 with an active attack booster this can get reduced to a single shot/wrecking ball which really helps.

The giant bugs have an effective range of 7 squares, with a combination of movement 4 and a single post-movement attack with a range of 1-3 squres. This single attack is a gentle soothing spittle called acid spit which'll only gently carress the Zero but burns away half the armor value of any hit unit for a turn. Awesomley this effect doesn't stack otherwise we'd be pretty dead pretty fast.

The giant bugs have nothing stealable on them unless you want to outfit the Vereins with giant ant legs or something but I wouldn't recommend that.

Battle Mastery
The battle mastery for this level will require a fair bit of thinking ahead from the start to finish. It's quite possible to get this all cleaned up by the skin of your teeth dead on in 13 turns but just some general thinking will help shave this down to 10 turns or less.

With the Molior it's often better to use your single attack to fire off the grapling hook over getting off a wrecking ball shot. Statistically killing a bug in your phase isn't any different than killing it in it's phase with a counter shot. It's more economic and easier on your energy levels to pull a target to you and counter kill it with the mechanical knife instead.

When we're onto the stage with your additional reinforcements Anderon's role will switch to that of pumping out support attacks. You'll want to have some energy left over for wrecking ball for this or even drop the molior frame for the inexpensive Nibel Dirk attack.

The key is to always think ahead a turn or two, making sure you'll have at least enough targets in range of an unmoved Verein Zero equal to Anderson's Helper level and another target in range for Anderson's attack.

Event 1
Clearing up your first initial set of bugs and moving to the target square will spawn four more giant bugs all around the target square. You'll probably be beaten by Raven to this so you'll know it's coming up.

Event 2
After all the bugs have been cleared up (Raven will help you with this if you're a little too slow. What a show off.) Anderson will admit he's been completly outclassed. The combat prowess of the NEXT and it's mercenary pilot just too much for someone relying on manual EVERYTHING and the age old frame-slot system.

In good old "It's only a simple test" fashion all hell breaks loose when more of the bugs escape captivity and flood into the test zone. A restraining team in clunky old walkers attempt to control the situation only to be obliterated by a ravenous horde of gnashing mandibles.

Things are pretty bleak now that this new massive wave of bugs have popped up and the battle mastery might seem neigh unobtainable. Raven in his Noir however knows what to do and is willing to get into the fray (ammunition costs be damned!) with us.

Event 3
Thinning out the numbers of bugs will trigget the next event, reinforcements have arried in the form of Jean, Ray and Bruno (Emma as well if in a good relationship with Anderson). They're not piloting their original mechs though, they're in the same clunky walkers from before.

The Arophoros are pretty well built units capable of taking punishment. Their only offensive option is a post-movement range 1-4 glue gun that will completly freeze up an ant for a whole turn and as such is much more effective than the collection of shock weaponry available to us in the military market.

More importantly the Arophoros can repair as a post movement so if Anderson's hurting we can get him back up to a much more safer level.

A king bug will also rear it's ugly head out of a nearby hole but it'll sit there smugly watching it's minions get chewed up. Any attempts to attack it will result in a lost action.

Event 4
Destroying the last giant bug leaves us with the King Bug who's pretty pissed at what we've done to it's peons. Raven can't help us due to his AC running out of ammunition (Must have left his laser blade in the hanger) and it's up to the Tsukuyomi Task Force to do it.

I guess I'll help as well. Everything's pretty much on auto-pilot here. If Emma's around you'll get a few extra lines of dialogue. If Emma really likes Anderson then we'll get some extra D'AWWWWW lines mixed in with the extra stuff. Indeed she is the most "adorable jailbait" ever.

Simulation 3 "Tang is Highly Profitable"

Completing chapter 3 unlocks simulation 3, another space based map but absolutley filled with Leoships...

Deployment
Friendly Forces
- 5 x Units of your choice

Enemy Forces
Randomly Deployed
- 16 x Leoships
--- Space Viking Level 8

Engaging
Lots and lots of fragile Leopships all around. This simulation would be dangerous if they were all piloted by AI systems but instead we get those horrible Space Viking fighter jocks who can't even find the ejection seat button in their cockpits.

This is a great stage to grind away some levels or earn money on thanks entirely to the ineptitude of the Space Vikings. Leoships? Moar like OZ-06MS Leos.

We also start pretty much ontop of the nearby asteroid feild as well so that's a potential +20% bonus to defenses right there if needed.

Waves
Three waves of four Leoships are on the cards here and though things may looks as if they're getting out of hand with your overpowering nature compared to these little fighters they're mere pushovers.

Rewards
- 21,000 cash

Ch 3 Combat "In Ackbar We Trust"

We're in the combat zone and everyone is launched for this one. Even our luxury culinary cruise ship is in the area ready to provide what support it can but low and behold our suspicions were correct...

Three ships is alot more than we were expecting and they're all well armed as well. Either way that doesn't change the fact that there may still be a hostage onboard one of the vessels and as long as it's just those three capital ships we should be fine.

Then the Tessaract's shields drop, in fact the entire ship is rendered inoperable, it's a complete sitting duck and something's jamming all it's abilities.

Friendly Forces
- Tessaract
--- Natalie
- Everyone else in their unit

Enemy Forces
- Hellfire
--- Stevan
-2 x Armaden
--- Pirate Captains
-9 x Leoship
--- Space Viking

Deployment of your own forces is exactly as picture above. If you have the Geves with you then Keeruu is located right in the middle of the Zaku and the AG-01.

Win Condition
The incoming fighters need to be delt with before we get through to the Hellfire but at the same time we need to keep an eye on Natalie in our ship. The Tessaract however has a massive amount of hitpoints and Natalie has the SP Command Trust which lets her heal a third of any allied unit's maximum hp including her own so she'll be perfectly fine where she is.

Engaging
There's little cover between us and the enemy fleet. There is a large asteroid field stretching in from the north east of the map towards the center but for this battle it's almost entirely ineffectual.

Since the Tessaract is our carrier we can board it and get fully repaired if things get hairy though it'll cost any boarding unit 5 morale and it won't refill our energy or restock our ammunition.

Whilst boarded we can also change over any of the items on our units, this includes weapons, different armor plating or brand new consumables if we use them in the battle. This is where having a good stock of equipment lying around will come in handy.

The Leoships are nippy little fighters that could have been dangerous if they weren't piloted by complete and utter morons who are only able to pull at most a D rank modifer for space which helps throw some of their evasion out of the window and amplifies their already fragile nature. Not even level 8 can save them.

They're equipped with two attacks, a 4-Way Machine Cannon that'll at most tickle your units into submission with a post-movement range of 1-4 . At most the cannons were hitting my well equipped units for a little around 40. One even critted Hotariko for just 38.

The real danger happens when you reduce a Leoship below 1/4 of their maximum hit points which'll enable them to use a kamikaze attack. Kamikaze attacks are a point blank attack which'll take out the Leopship but have a good crit chance with 300 attack power. This can hurt.

It's often better to avoid attacking in your turn if you're not guranteed to kill the unit and to counter attack instead during the Enemy Phase. This way you'll only get a dose of Machine Cannons and not a crazy space viking in your face.

Leoships controlled by AI are lower in level but their Terrain Stat for space is a B, much better than that of the Space Vikings so they're a little more deadly.

The Armadens will be completly ineffectual for this battle so don't worry about them at all.

All the enemy units in this stage drop nothing with melee critical hits so you're not missing out on anything if you stick to range attacks.

Event 1
On enemy phase 2 the two Armaden battleships retreat from the battlezone. Suddenly things are much more easier maybe our show of force might have detered the pirates. Either way now it's just us, the fighter and the Hellfire.

Event 2
Shooting down five of the Leoships will trigger this next event. We're really overpowering the pirates and it seems we're being hailed by the commander of their forces.
Weird, it looks like we're the ones winning here. The real trap is now sprung and the two Amardens that retreated previously have completly flanked the Tessaract from above and below. Each capital ship also deploys 9 more Leoships as well.

Piority switches from offense to defence as Anderson is moved directly next to the Tessaract only for him to get jumped by two more Leoships (Oh god there's hundreds of them). After a brief exchange of gunfire and dirk swinging Stevan reveals that these fighters are being controlled by much better AI and onboard one there is a hostage. Sneaky bastard.

For now you'll be unable to take on the AI Leoships but the ones still piloted by the pirates are fair game. It's up to Rane to find out where the hostage is.
Event 3
As soon as a Leoship targets Anderson the next event will trigger. The Tessaract has picked up another unit closing in, it's pretty small, maybe another fighter? Things just seem to be getting worse.
Reinforcements! Though it isn't officialy on our side contact is established with the new unit and it's assitance requested. It's ANOTHER cute girl in a mecha and it looks like she has a beef with the pirates as well. She drops one of their capital ships in a single shot and Rane locates which of Leoships the hostage is in.

Anderson will grab it and take it onboard the Tessaract and leave everyone else to the clean up of the remaining pirates.
Battle Mastery
The objectives have changed to annhilation now that we've rescued the hostage and the battle mastery makes itself known. All pirate fighters now will make a beeline for the Tessaract and the remaining Armaden will start making a move as well.

The Battle Mastery for this stage is pretty easy and readily obtainable with Emma's mercy around. Chip the Hellfire's health down gradually to a little under 100 and then just sit around waiting for Stana to fly in and pick up the kill.

Depending on how quickly Stana spams her energy draining attacks it may take a few turns of her generating energy to get around shooting the Hellfire down so be patient.

Event 4
Being engaged by the remaining Armaden or attacking it will result in Anderson making a dynamic entry with a new frame mounted on the Zero destroying the capital ship in one shot.

The Hellfire out of options will now either start moving at full speed or engage any nearby targets whilst constantly deploying two Leoships every turn. We're now on the home stretch.

Engaging the Hellfire
It's worth noting that a good portion of your units have some words to say to Stevan when they attack. Anderson, Hotariko, Jean, Ray, Stana and Yohko all have something to say, but Hotariko's is the bestest.

The Hellfire is a large class unit so it's a little easier to dent compared to the Musai but it's also flying around with an S Rank in space and Stevan has counter which means he'll reguarly go first with his counter attacks.

There's no dead zone when it comes to the Hellfire but it's primary anti suit weapons the turret machine cannons have a post-movement range of 1-2, are well stocked with ammunition and pretty accurate.

With a post-movement range of 2-6 the Hellfire also comes with a Laser Cannon which is obviously beam based and as such can rip our Zaku up pretty badly. It is however geared towards anti-ship combat so it's highly inaccurate so engaging from 3 squares and beyond might be much more suitable.

Be careful though, the Hellfire's Laser Cannon critted a defending John for 178. That's a big number.

If you need time to fix up your units again Rane comes in hander with Fetter to buy you a few turns of putting things back together.

Event 5
As the Hellfire is eventually sunk Stevan gives us a good old bad guy monologue before becoming space dust. Everyone's exhausted, but not so much that they can't thank Stana for her timely arrival.

At the very least we can invite her onboard, repair and refuel before she has to go and there seems to be something Natalie wants to discuss with Anderson.

Simulation 2-B "Zaku vs Zaku"

Completing Chapter 2-B unlocks simulation 2-B but locks us out of 2-A. It's us vs a ton of Zakus in this one...

Deployment
Friendly Forces
- 5 x Units of your choice

Enemy Forces
Randomly Deployed
- 6 x Zaku II
--- Zeon Soldier Levels 3-4

Engaging
The Zakus are just like before but are more numerous and the random waves that spawn in might worry some if you had trouble last stage. This time around however we get to deploy our units right ontop of the colony so we can spam energy draining weapons quite reguarly and gain a nice 20% bonus as long as we sit on it.

There's nowhere to repair on this stage so if things start to get out of control quit the simulator. Simulator 1 is better than this stage simply because you can kill the E.Y.Es faster, the E.Y.Es give out more experience, cash and there's an entire military base to leech from.

Waves
The waves are pretty small for this stage. In fact just a single suit will spawn during the first three neutral phases so you're not going to get washed aside by a Zaku zerg.

Rewards
- 4,500 Cash
- RARE: Super Hard Steel Alloy on melee crits
otherwise
- 300 Cash for critical melee hits

Simulation 2-A "Panzer vs Wanzer"

Completing Chapter 2-A unlocks simulation 2-A but locks us out of 2-B. The poor Federation can only field tanks against our forces...

Deployment
Friendly Forces
- 5 x Units of your choice

Enemy Forces
Randomly Deployed
- 10 x Type 61 Tanks
--- E.F.S.F Soldiers Level 3

As an oddity the tanks will deploy before your own forces.

Engaging
Oh dear oh dear. The Type 61 tanks are just as bad as ever and it's not difficult to feel sorry for the poor tank crews. Good thing this is only a simulation. All those simulated widowed wives and their fatherless children...waiting for the day that daddy's coming home..."Next christmas honey, daddy'll make it back next christmas. " "But daddy's missed the last two..." BAW.

By sticking to the base where you start you've got no chance of loosing at all. Even if you leave the saftey of the base there's barely any chance of getting shot to hell.

You won't be earning crazy levels on the E.F.S.F compared to simulator 1 but you can still make ample amounts of cash here as well as build up a large inventory of spare machineguns.

Waves
Three waves of two more Type 61 Tanks will arrive in the neutral phase. Nothing to sweat about.

Rewards
- 6,400 Cash
- RARE: 12.7mm Machine Gun on melee crits
otherwise
- 300 Cash for critical melee hits

Ch 2-B Combat "3 x (S = d / t)"

Things are pretty grim by the time our scrambled units arrive in the combat zone and since we're in a very open sector of space there isn't much cover between us and Side 7, things could get ugly...

The attack on the Side 7 is well underway but there doesn't seem to be any sign of Char amongst the Zeon forces, just a unit of ZakuIIs and a Musai maintaining a peremiter guard around the area. The matter is only complicated some more when a new mobile suit enters the fray emerging from Side 7, but it's not a Zeon unit, it's some brand new white mobile suit.

Communication is established between our forces and the federation pilot who turns out to be just a civilian, Amuro Ray. It looks like the Federation are relying on some show of power to prove they're not pushovers and Amuro's caught up in this mess. Anderson and Jean resolve that they'll need to protect the white mobile suit whilst it fights or the Federation will be looked upon as a laughing stock.

Deployment
Friendly Forces
-Verein Zero
---Anderson
-AG-01
---Jean
-4 x Units of your choice
-Gundam NPC
---Amuro

Enemy Forces
-5 x ZakuII
--- Zeon Soldier
- 1 x Musai
--- Doren

Note that your third optional unit to be deployed will be put to the left of Jean since they can't be ontop of Jean.

Win Condition
Another straight forward clean up job with some additional USEFUL assistance. The gundam's better armed than the alternate route, head vulcans, beam saber but this time Amuro has a nice and powerful beam rifle as well.

The gundam can handle the first Zaku that comes at it but if you move slowly for this one he'll be engaged by two or maybe even three if you're moving at a super cautious snail pace, the Gundam won't be able to handle three at the same time.

Throw caution to the wind by sending over one unit with flash or send Anderson with Attention to...well...grab the attention of the Zakus and give Amuro a fair fighting chance and he'll provide some great covering firing when he's done killing his target.

Engaging
Initial engagements with the ZakuIIs can be dicey at first, there isn't much cover in the area short of a few scattered asteroid fields down south-westish of our positions where the skirmishing will take place.

Side 7 is capable of providing a quick refuel job but it's positioned well out of the main combat zone so that's a moot point.

The Zakus work on a same sort of level as empty load Vereins except with a sturdier health bar, are better adapted for space combat and are also classed as medium sized opponents. They'll be taking noticably less damage than the E.Y.Es if you're inappropiatley equipped for space combat.
They're also armed with Zaku Machineguns and a Heat Hawk.

The Zaku Machinegun has a negative modifer to accuracy which means even without SP commands or defensive terrain to take advantage of these range 1-4 post movment weapons will have a hit rate of just over 50-60% with damage hitting at about 70-100 depending on how armored up your units are.

The real danger comes from the Zaku Heat Hawks which'll reliably hit and with a bit more damage tacked on. Fortune smiles on us though, the Zakus are slower than our own units and keeping the Zakus at bay is an easy job.

To make things easier Zakus are weak to beam based attacks as displayed by Jean's opening attack with a Beam Shooter.
Ouch. Critical hit. If you've got beam shooters, beam handguns or even beam based close combat weaponry the Zakus should be a simple push over.

As with the E.Y.Es the Zakus will drop scrap metal which'll auto sell on the military market for cash on critical melee hits. On super rare occassions you'll cleave off some Super Hard Steel Alloy armor instead.

The Musai is our first capital ship target and is classified as double large. That means it's attacks will hit really hard but not often and any attacks we hit with will scratch the paint even with it's horrible armor rating of 20.

The Musai comes with two range 2-5 attacks. Type-145 missiles which will do the most damage. You don't want to get hit by this attack as it's more of a ship to ship warfare weapon but Doren's so awesome he doesn't care that he's trying to hit suits with them. I believe they can be intercepted and possibly slashed away.

After expending missile ammunition the Musai will switch over to the Mega Particle Cannons and start spamming those. They're a little weaker than the missile attacks but the Musai can keep firing these almost indefinetly but at the same accuracy rate. Durr hurr hit small units with anti-ship weaponry hurr durr.

Things aren't any better if you get up close at ranges 1-3 as the Musai will fire off bursts of anti-suit missiles which are much more accurate and are still painful as hell.

It's up to preference on how you engage the Musai, you can do it at range and risk getting hit by attacks that can shave off well over 200+ in damage or you can resort to close quaters and take lots of little hits.

There's nothing to steal off the Musai with crit melee hits.

As of the Stage 6 update all Zakus are now highly resistant to bullets but have taken on an additional weakness in the form of slash attacks. Melee attacks and any beam weapons are now highly prefered.

Optional Flag Event 1
Things can be pretty tough for an untrained civilian getting tossed into the deep end when it comes to mecha combat. At least the TTF have had some form of training. Moving Anderson next to Amuro gives you an option to talk to the poor guy and give him some words of encouragement. This optional event can be done at any time in the mission but be sure to grab it as it makes Amuro think a little more highly of the TTF.

Optional Flag Event 2
If words from Anderson aren't enough Jean can unleash her own brand of encouragement. A short exchange between her and Amuro will give our mobile suit pilot prodigy a good opinion on mercenaries, heck one of the best ones is a cute girl. Another event that can be done at any time during the mission and you don't have to burn an attack action to do it just put Jean next to Amuro.

Event 1
At the start of turn three a new friendly unit emerges from Side 7. It's the Federation's new battleship White Base currently under acting captain Bright Noa. It looks like we're going to have some help in taking down the Musai.

The White Base and her crew however pick up more Zaku's in the area which deploy right in between the TTF and the Musai and one of them's THREE TIMES FASTER!

Battle Mastery
Battle Mastery here is going to be hit or miss but thanks to the general flow of battle you'll probably have all your units lined up right where you need them. We're getting off lucky again as Char's custom ZakuII isn't three times faster than his fellow soldiers with only 20 more speed tacked onto it. Speed 120 would just be silly (But so CHAR).

To make up for that fact Char is level 9 and his suit comes with a kick attack (YES) instead of a heat hawk and a few levels in shield block so he can use his ZakuII shield to cut down the damage he takes.

His attacks will chew up your units very fast unless you burn SP so ignore everyone else on the field and dogpile him with support attacks. A well equipped Jean can go toe to toe with Char for a while, which'll result in an epic firefight between the Golden Star and the Red Comet.

As long as Char is preoccupied with you he won't give a damn about Amuro, so it's more of a race against the Gundam. You'll have about three turns before Amuro can finish off a Zaku/move close enough to open up on Char.

If you're finding it difficult to meet this deadline try the level again and leave two of the starting ZakuIIs behind for Amuro to clean up or if you have Rane on the field Fetter the Musai whenever you can to mess up Char's deployment.

Event 2
Bringing the Musai down below 2000 hp will force Doren to retreat. There's no real way to destroy it at this stage but at the very least this pain in the backside is out of the way.

Event 3
If you let Amuro engage Char or if you shoot Char down things go onto auto pilot. Char and Amuro will be fully healed, rearmed and engage in their own little battle with Slender and Ryu Jose getting involved as well.

The white mobile suit's brand new beam weaponry far surpass that of current technology and it shows when Amuro takes out Slender in a single shot forcing Char to retreat with his tail between his legs.

If there are no more enemy units on the battlefield it's mission done otherwise it's case of cleaning Side 7 space up before we can congratulate Amuro on a fine sortee. Gee he must be a natural or something.